South Carolina, Desegregating Edisto State Park

Speaker is from Charleston, SC; he is a 55-year-old black man with a college education.

Another thing that we encountered during this period was, we had in Charleston the Edisto State Park which was also operated on a lily-white basis while tax monies, uh, paid for its operations. We again went into the federal courts, and prior to going into the court the state of South Carolina decided that they would close the golf cour—I mean the, the state park down. Therefore when we reached the court several days later, it was looked upon as a moot case. However, members of the Black community did not feel too badly about it because they were satisfied with the fact that the golf course was com—I mean, the state park—was closed down to all persons and that no one could enjoy any of the facilities. This was a tragic situation to see such a beautiful tract of land with such wonderful buildings on such a beautiful strand of ocean closed down because of the segregated thinking of many of our, of lawmakers.